Steven Brust: Iorich

Con­ver­sa­tion went on around me; I ig­nored it.

“Smells like re­al food, Boss.”

“Yep. Soon.”

“How long since we’ve had re­al food?”

“About a month. Soon.”

“How did we do?”

I set the wine down and checked the purs­es, us­ing my body to hide them from cu­ri­ous eyes. “Not great, but, you know, it’s pure prof­it. Strange place.”

“They’re all talk­ing to each oth­er.”

“Yeah.”

It re­al­ly was in­ter­est­ing—you don’t nor­mal­ly find an inn where mer­chants and peas­ants talk freely with each oth­er, or no­ble­men and trades­men; even in the East, where it was more com­mon to see the mix of class­es in the same inn, they didn’t talk to each oth­er much. I didn’t even no­tice any spe­cial hos­til­ity be­tween the two ob­vi­ous aris­to­crats and the var­ious Teck­la. Odd. There was prob­ably a sto­ry there.

Just be­cause I was cu­ri­ous, I picked out a cou­ple of mer­chants—both of them in the col­ors of the Tsalmoth—and bought them drinks. They gave me a sus­pi­cious look as I ap­proached, but mer­chants are al­ways aware they might be talk­ing to a fu­ture cus­tomer, so they don’t want to give of­fense.

“Par­don my in­tru­sion,” I said. “I’m Vlad.”

They gave me their names, but I don’t re­mem­ber them; they sound­ed al­most iden­ti­cal. Come to that, they looked pret­ty much the same, too—prob­ably broth­ers. “I’m just cu­ri­ous,” I told them. “I’m not used to inns where there is such a mix.”

“A mix?” said the one whose name end­ed in the hard­er con­so­nant.

“Teck­la, mer­chants, no­ble­men, all in the same inn.”

“Oh.” He smiled a lit­tle. “We get along bet­ter around here than most places, prob­ably.”

I nod­ded. “It seems odd.”

“It’s be­cause we all hate the navy.”

“The navy?”

He nod­ded. That didn’t ex­plain any­thing—Whitemill was hun­dreds of miles from the near­est port.

It took a few more ques­tions, but it fi­nal­ly emerged that, for what­ev­er rea­son, the Em­pire had giv­en con­trol of the lo­cal canals to the Im­pe­ri­al navy, in­stead of what­ev­er en­gi­neer­ing corps usu­al­ly han­dled such things. It was some­thing that had hap­pened long ago, when the Or­ca were high­er in the Cy­cle and so could ex­ert more eco­nom­ic pres­sure, and it had nev­er been re­voked even dur­ing the In­ter­reg­num.

“The whole re­gion lives off those canals, most­ly for wa­ter­ing the fields.”

“And the navy doesn’t main­tain them?”

“They do well enough, I sup­pose, when they need to.”

“I still don’t—”

“The navy,” he re­peat­ed. “They’re all Or­ca.”

“I know that.”

“Or­ca,” he re­peat­ed, as if I were miss­ing some­thing.

I glanced at one of the no­ble­men in the room, a wom­an hav­ing an an­imat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with the host; she wore the col­ors of the Tias­sa. “So, the barons are Tias­sa, but they need to deal with the Or­ca.”

He nod­ded. “And the Or­ca want to soak ev­ery cop­per pen­ny they can from the place.”

“So ev­ery­one hates them more than they hate each oth­er?”

He frowned. “We don’t hate each oth­er.”

“Sor­ry,” I said. “It’s just a bit odd.”

“You’d un­der­stand if you’d ev­er ir­ri­gat­ed on a navy canal, or shipped goods on a navy barge.”

“I al­ready un­der­stand,” I said. “I know Or­ca.”

They both smiled, and of­fered to buy me a drink. I ac­cept­ed. In case you don’t know, the House of the Or­ca is the House of sailors and naval war­riors, which is well enough, but it’s most­ly the House of bankers, and fi­nanciers. No one likes them; I don’t even think Or­ca like oth­er Or­ca. We trad­ed sto­ries of Or­ca we had known and hat­ed; they made a few po­lite probes about my his­to­ry and busi­ness, but didn’t press when I steered the dis­cus­sion else­where.

They filled me in on a few things I hadn’t heard about, hav­ing been away from “civ­iliza­tion” for a while: an up­ris­ing of a few mi­nor lordlings in the north­west, which would in­crease de­mand for spun wool; the re­cent re­peal of the chim­ney tax with­in the House of the Tsalmoth, which was on­ly a grain in a hectare; the re­cent de­ci­sion “by Charl­som over there, for­tune smile on his loins” to per­mit tav­erns to sell their own lo­cal­ly made brews with­out sur­charge; and the pro­posed Im­pe­ri­al land-​use loan, which would ob­vi­ous­ly be a catas­tro­phe for the peas­ants with­out help­ing the land­lords, or be a dis­as­ter for the land­lords with­out help­ing the peas­ants, or else have no ef­fect on any­thing. It was all from the point of view of the small mer­chant, which would in­ter­est me more if I were one. I nod­ded and smiled a lot while my mind wan­dered.

The con­ver­sa­tion in the room was a chat­ter­ing hum—no dis­cernible words, just a con­stant noise of voic­es of dif­fer­ing pitch­es and tones, punc­tu­at­ed by laughs and coughs. It’s al­ways strange when you’re hear­ing some­one speak in a tongue you don’t know, be­cause names of peo­ple or places that you do know sud­den­ly jump out. You hear, “blah blah blah Dra­gaera City blah blah,” and for just an in­stant you think you un­der­stand that lan­guage af­ter all.

It was just like that when amid the chit­ter­ing and buzzing of mean­ing­less noise I sud­den­ly heard, clear as a whis­tle, the words “Sethra Lavode.” I was in­stant­ly alert.

I shift­ed in my chair, but that didn’t help—the speak­er was at a ta­ble just be­hind the two Tsalmoth. I looked at my drink­ing com­pan­ions and said, “Do you know what they’re talk­ing about?”

“Who?”

I ges­tured to­ward the ta­ble I’d over­heard. “What they say star­tles me ex­treme­ly, and I would ad­mire to know if it’s true.”

Just so you don’t get the wrong idea—may the gods keep me from ev­er con­vey­ing a false im­pres­sion—I hadn’t heard a thing ex­cept the words “Sethra Lavode.”

They lis­tened for a mo­ment—be­ing a bit clos­er to the speak­er—then nod­ded. “Oh, that. It’s true enough. My cousin is a post in­spec­tor, and told me while he was pass­ing through on his way to Gate­hall from Adri­lankha.”

“In­deed,” I said, look­ing im­pressed.

“Ev­ery­one’s talk­ing about it; I’m sur­prised you hadn’t heard.”

“Are there any more de­tails?”

“No. Just the ar­rest.”

Ar­rest?

I said, “For­give me, did I un­der­stand you cor­rect­ly? Sethra Lavode is ar­rest­ed?”

He shook his head. “No, no. It is said that she has agreed to be a wit­ness.”

“For?”

“The ac­cused, my lord. Aliera e’Kieron.”

“Aliera e’Kieron.”

He nod­ded.

“Ar­rest­ed.”

He nod­ded again.

“For what, ex­act­ly?”

At that point, both of them spoke at once. It took a while to get the sto­ry out, but ap­par­ent­ly Aliera had tried to kill the Em­press, had loosed a de­mon in the House of the Drag­on, and had at­tempt­ed to be­tray the Em­pire to an East­ern army. I got the im­pres­sion that this was a part of the sto­ry they weren’t sure of. But there seemed to be one thing they were sure of: “The tri­al starts next month.”

“In­ter­est­ing in­deed,” I said. “How far are we from the Riv­er?” In this part of the Em­pire, “the Riv­er” can on­ly mean the Adri­lankha Riv­er. My Riv­er.